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CUv^T 



CLAYTON, OF DELAWARE, 



DE&IVKHF.D AT THE 



WHIG MASS MEETING HELD IN WILMINGTON 



V THE 15TH OF JUNE, 1344. 



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WASHINGTON: 

printeh by gales ajtd seatoit. 

1844. 



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SPEECH 



-*- Fellow-citizens : The chief object I have in view, in this day addressing you, 
^s to call back your attention, and that of the country at large, from the many dis- 

-Jtracting topics which now agitate the public mind, to the greatest of all the issues 

'^involved in the Presidential election. The great question to be decided by that 
election is a question of BREAD — a question whether we shall abandon the whole 
principle of protection extended to the laboring classes of this country by the tariff 
act of 1842, and adopt, in lieu of it, a tariff discriminating /o;- revenue and against 
protection ; a question whether we shall go back, by our own voluntary act, to that 
state of colonial vassalage which existed in this country while England held us in 
subjection, and her statesmen boasted that they would not permit us lo manufac- 
ture a hobnail for ourselves ; a question whether we shall now surrender to Eng- 
land one of the most essential blessings resulting from that independence for which 
the Whigs of the Revolution successfully contended. To every retiecting mind it 
must be apparent that but few subjects can be decided to the satisfaction of a ma- 
jority of the people, at a single election ; and it is the old trick of designing poli- 
ticians to escape defeat upon subjects in controversy, vitally affecting the country, 
by multiplying the issues to be decided, distracting the attention of the people, and 
dividing the majority on the dreaded questions by others of inferior importance. 
These are the tricks of all the enemies of Whig principles of the firesent day. 
Those gentlemen are well aware that a vast majority of the freemen of this coun- 
try is decidedly hostile to the modern free trade doctrines, and as decidedly friend- 
ly to the Whig tariff of 1842, embracing the Whig principle of protection to home 
labor. With their new Democratic doctrine of free trade, all the leaders among 
them are conscious that they cannot go to trial before the country wiihoul incurring 
inevitable defeat. Within the past year the friends of the protective policy have, 
every where, routed their opponents when this question has been raised in the elec- 
tions. Our friends have unfrocked the partisans and advocates of British interests 
in this nation. Thoy have torn the masks from the faces of those uho prefer Eng- 
lish to American labor. The sheep-skins have been stripped from their backs, 
and the wolves now stand out in their naked deformity. To ensure our triumph in 
this great question, our friends have at last adopted a determination, upon which 
our welfare eminently depends, to reject with scorn alliance with, or assistance 
from, all cow-hoys, and such as pretend to occupy a neutral position between the 
contending parties on this question. This is a subject upon which tlie American 
people can no longer be deceived by pretended friends or by open enemies. And, 
at this moment, you see the foes of the American system, conscious of their ap- 
proaching destiny, if the true issue shall be submitted to the people, are, every 
where, endeavoring to direct public attention from it to other subjects, presented 
for the purpose of exciting popular feeling. Let us guard against the wiles of our 
adversaries. Our situation, at this time, may be compared to that of a large family 
about to emigrate to the West. We have one wagon belonging to our concern, 

^ with an excellent team attached to it. We can carry in it all that is really neces- 
sary for our safety and our happiness. But we cannot carry every iliinjr which the 
caprice or fancy of every member of the family may induce him to tlirow into it. 
If we suffer every one to pile in, among our necessaries of life, all the trumpery 
which he may have purchased to carry with him, we shall soon find that there is not 
room enough for a hundredth part of it, and that one team is tUte.rli/ unable to haul it. 
In this state of things, the only cour^e left us, as sensible men, is to restrict the 
freight in the wagon to such things necessary to our safety and coa)l'ort ::s we can 



certainly Jransport, But wo will leave every one, who thinks he has the means of 
transportation, independently of us, to lug along what he ()leases ; and we will 
promise not to fall out by the way or quarrel with any friend who may choose to 
go the journey with us, because he thinks proper to load himself down with articles 
which we are unable or unwilling to carry. The wai^on and the whole cavalcade 
are now before me, about to start for tlie West. Henry Clay, the driver, knows 
the road well, and by his side siis Theodore Frelinghuysen, who is a good guide 
and experienced traveller himself. Inside of the wairon I see the proceeds of the 
sales of the public lands, toith duties laid for protection to home labor, a sound 
currency, an economical administration of the Government, and divers other good 
articles, necessary for our safety and prosperity. But there fjoes a fellow behind, 
driving an unbroken colt in a cart of his own, filled up with Terns bonds and Texas 
land scrip. As he wishes to go along with us, we shall not dispute with him about 
his freight, though 1 tliink he will not drive his cart over the mountains this year ! 
There comes another man, tugging in the re^r with a wheelbarrow, loaded down 
with two hundred millions of G overnment scrip, to pay off the State debts. He is a 
good fellow in the main, and decidedly in favor of our taking along every article in 
the wagon, but will insist on his peculiar notion th.at these State debts must go in 
company with us; and while he works on his own hook, at his own barrow, I shall 
never quarrel with him or attempt to drive him back ; though, if I nmst express 
my opinion, I think his freight will be swamped among the fens of Salt river. 
There comes another fellow, with horses attached to a cumbrous machine, moving 
on skids, outside of which you may see the protruding muzzles of a whole battery 
of cannon, and ilie inside of which is filled with ammunition, guns, drums, and 
trumpets, and all the paraphernalia of irar. That fellow is full of fight, and wants 
to CO to war with eiihcr Mexico or England, or some body else, he is not very par- 
ticular wiili whom. He wished to put all that freight inside of our wagon ; but when 
we satisfied him we had not room for the fiftieth part of it, he agreed to bring it 
himself, with his own force, and I am not willing to drive him back, or quarrel 
with him about his whims ; for although he, like the others, has his peculiar notions, 
yet he, as well as they, is in favor of our carrying every article we have in our 
wagon, and desires to accompany us as far as he can to defend and protect it. 
Yonder comes another fellow, tottering under the v/eight of a knapsack, filled with 
treatises on polemical divAnity and a thousand sectarian controversies. He ardently 
implored us to give room in tiie wagon for all that luggage ; but he was assured that 
if one-half his tracts should be read on the road, instead of proceeding in harmony 
tOTOther, there would be a general fight among the whole company ; after which, 
wiien Catholic and Protestant had pommelled each other soundly, the company 
would be separated into religious factions, and would never reach their place of des- 
tination. He was informed, then, if he would take along his knapsack, he must 
bear its wei"ht, and keep its contents to himself, as. the only tracts allowed to be 
carried in the wagon, or disseminated on the march, are those which inculcate 
reli'rious toleration, in its widest and most liberal sense, and breathe no other spirit 
than peace on earth, and good will among all men, nf all sects, classes, and denom- 
inations. 

I can see, also, (let me add,) a rival train, with another wagon, behind all these, 
loiIin<^ hard to overtake ours, and bound for the san)e country, where they mean to 
settle, as squatters, for four years to come, if they can reach it before us. This 
waaon is a heavy lumbering vehicle, being but a clumsy attempt to imitate a cele- 
brated carriage which came into fashion about the year 1800. The horses are old 
political hacks, many of them being spavined and wind-broken, and most of them 
sorely- u!s;rcssed with the thumps, a disease contracted by them on a long journey 
up Sail liver four years ago. Inside of this wagon you may see ponderous safes 
and chests of iron, upon which the bra/.en capitals are i)lainly legible, the " SUB- 
TREASURY SEPARATES THE GOVERNMENT FROM THE BANKS, 
AMD THE PEOPLE FROM THEIR OWN MONEY." On many of these 



massive chests wc read, " Hard money for the office holders and bank rags for 
other people." On the top of all tliese they seem to liave piled Ossa on Pelion, as 
if they desiijned to put all Texas upon wheels, including parts of the Mexican States 
of Santa Fe, Chihuahua, Coahuila, and Tamaulipas, the whole crowned with 
the Tezian debt of untold millions ; hv the side of which, on another package, you 
may read ^' No assumption of our own State debts by our own Government.'''' But 
the heaviest weight of all presses on the driver's box, where you may see James 
K. Polk, of Tennessee, holding his nags, four in hand, while George M, Dallas, 
sitting by his side, vainly plies a hickory goad to the excoriated flanks of the jaded 
animals. The driver sits on a cushion of enormous weight, labelled " Free Traded 
Every i)art of this vehicle is of foreign manufacture. The very wood of which it 
is made is of foreign growth ; even the horse shoes were made by English black- 
smiths ; the harness is all manufactured out of English leather, by English harness- 
makers ; all the wheel tires, the axletrees, and even the bridle bits, were imported 
from Liverpool. No American laborer, whether native or naturalized, was allowed 
to drive a nail into this wagon. Strapped up in the boot behind you may see a 
broken treaty loith Mexieo, covered over with that " black llag," which Mr. Butler, 
in the last Baltimore Convention, predicted would prove the funeral pall of a cer- 
tain concern, whenever it should abandon the principle that a majority should 
govern, A band of discarded office holders and office hunters surround the wagon, 
shouting, at the top of their lungs, for " Fret Trade and Texas /" " Hard Money 
and James K. Polk T^ There is a little fellow, the editor of a |)a!lry newspaper, 
blowing a penny whistle, labelled " Down iriih all Corporations " while another 
of the same profession grinds a hurdy-gurdy to the old tune of" Bargain and Cor- 
ruption," and the " Murdtrcd Coalitio?/.'" Near these is another of the same trade, 
riding on a donkey, while he drums on the dead hide of the Bank of the United 
Statfis. Behind tiiese comes off a concerto, in which you may hear the praises of 
the Harmonious Democracy chanted, amidst every variety ol sound, from the 
twanging of a jewsharp to the thrumming of a banjo. Whether ihis assemblage 
shall ever proceed further on their journey than that Serbonian bog which lies near 
the sources of Salt river, I leave others to conjecture. Pharaoh pursued the Isra- 
elites till he was swallowed in the Red sea. I feel too good natured just now to 
foretell the destiny of James K. Polk and his followers. 

But, jesting apart, let nie return, in all sober seriousness, to the true question, as 
I have already stated it — protection or no protection fov tUe country, bread or no 
bread for the laborer. It is no part of my purpose to discuss that question at 
length. To enable others to understand it, I have only to refer them io the last ar- 
ticle in the March number of Blackwood's Magazine. We may there learn how 
Englishmen reason among themselves, when discoursing on the follies of the vision- 
ary doctrine of free trade ; and we may also learn from it how much credit we 
should attach to articles of a contrary import, written by Englishmen for the Amer- 
ican market. English periodicals, written for the purpose of being read by Amer- 
ican citizens, have done more injury to the cause of the American laborer than any 
equal number of publications on the same subject which have appeared in our 
country. 

In connexion with this subject, my fellow-citizens, let me say, that there are not 
wanting in the ranks of our opponents men who have been bold enough to charge 
Henry Clay and T'.ieodore Frelinghuysen, the chosen champions of Whig principles, 
with having abandoned the protective polic}' by their votes fur the compromise act 
of the 2d of March, 1S33. It is wy duty to defend these, my old associates in the 
public councils, against so unjust an accusation ; and that duty becomes peculiarly 
imperative upon me, when inquiries are constantly addressed to me, as they have 
been of late, in regard to the true character of the voles which they gave on that 
memorable occasion. I cannot answer all these inquiries by letter. I will, there- 
fore, this day attempt to answer them here ; for I see 

" A chiel's amang us takin' notes, 
And, faith, he'll prent 'em ;" 



6 

and 1 liave reason to hope that bis report of wlsat I am about to say may reach those 
who have addressed these inquiries to me. 

1 was in the Senate at tlie time of the passage of the compromise act, was a 
member of the committee which reported it, and had the best possible opportunity 
of knowing the motives and objects of Mr. Clay in the introduction and passage of 
that measure. His aim was not only to prevent a civil war, and the dissolution 
of the Union, but to save the protective policy. I am convinced that, hut for the 
passage of that act, the protective system would have been substantially repealed 
more tlian ten years ago, and every manufacture in the country dependent upon it 
stricken down. 

I know that nothin<T is more common than for us to hear certain individuals, who 
are utterly ignorant of the real circumstances which existed in the early part of the 
year 1833, in a spirit of idle bravado, boasting how bravely thei/ would liave defied 
the threats of the Nullifiers, how resolute they would have proved themselves had 
the opportunity been oftered them, in hanging up all the leaders of thai faction, and 
how rejoiced they would have been in administering, through the swiftly willing 
agency of General Jackson, a salutary castigation to what they term " the imbecile 
arrogance and bullying of South Carolina." These and similar remarks are gen- 
erally made for the purpose of introducing a condemnation of Mr. Clay for his 
agency in the passage of tiie compromise act, which they say was a sacrifice of the 
protective principle, to prevent a war with the Nullifiers. Witiiout doubling the 
courage or the sincerity of those who thus often boast of the superior firmness and 
more manly bearing which they would have exhibited at that crisis, I will endeavor 
briefly to show you that these gentlemen are ignorant both of the effect and mean- 
ing of the act, as well as of the objects sought to be secured by its author. 

It is quite a common error, that the act itself proposes a horizontal tariff of 20 
per cent, on all articles of importation, as the minimum rate of duties, and the final 
resting place at whi«;h the reduction of duties proposed by the act shall cease, and 
stand unchanged and unchangeable forever. At this day, gentlemen of intelli- 
gence, professing to understand and discuss the legal effect of this act, often 
speak of it as a law the great object of which was, by a system of gradual diminu- 
tion, to reduce the duties, as (hey stood under the act of 1832, to a universal levy 
of 20 per cent, at the expiration of nine years and four moths. In other words, 
they regard the compromise act as fixing one rate for all dutiable articles from and 
after the 30th of June, 1842, that rate being 20 per cent, ad valorem ; and as con- 
taining certain binding stipulations or pledges on the part of the authors of that law, 
that no higher rate of duty should ever, after that day, be collected by the General 
Government. This supposition, preposterous as it is, you have doubtless observed, 
is an opinion quite commonly expressed, and that, too, not unfrequenlly by grave 
legislators on the floors of Congress. That the enemies of Mr. Clay should have 
so expressed themselves is niatter to be regretted ; but when the J'riendsof the tarifl, 
and the very men who profess the utmost confidence in the rectitude and consist- 
enc}' of that great statesman, ftsll into the same error, it is high time their mistake 
should be corrected. 

It is perfectly true that the first section of the act fixes 20 per centum ad valo- 
rem as the lowest rate at which dutiable articles should be admitted after the 30th 
of June, 1842 ; but the third section of the act provides that, from and after that day, 
*' duties upon imports shall be laid for the purpose of raising such revenue as may be 
necessary to an economical administration of the Government ;" and also that such 
duties shall be assessed on the home valuation, and pai/able in cash. The leading 
principles established by the act were, first, that after the 30th of June, 1842, a sufl!i- 
cient revenue should be raised from import duties alorie to defray the expenses of the 
Government ; secondly, that no more revenue should be so collected than should 
be demanded by an economical administration of the Government ; thirdly, that the 
best possible guards against frauds on the tariif should be established, by the adop- 
tion of the new system of assessing the duties on the home instead of the foreign 



■value, and making these duties payable in cash. Whether these duties, from which 
all the revenue for the support of Government was to be derived, should be fixed at 
20 per cent., or at 50 per cent., or any other rate, was of course a subject left for 
the future consideration and action of Congress, whenever it should be discovered 
that the minimum rate of 20 per cent., adopted by the first section of the bill, was 
insufficient for the support of Government. Nothing was further (rom the intention 
of those who passed this law than to attempt to prevent future legislation, discrimi- 
nating with a view to protect home labor, in the contingency of a defect of revenue 
from duties of 20 per cent. I have ever regarded the tariff passed by the Congress 
of 1842 as a substantial compliance, in most respects, with this pledge in the com- 
promise act, with this exception only : thatUw, while it levies duties on imports to 
support the Government, looks to the proceeds of the sales of the public lands as 
an auxiliary for that purpose ; while the compromise act gave, to me, as I thought 
when I voted for it, and to every other friend of the protective system, at the same 
time, a solemn assurance that, after the 30th of June, 1842, the land fund should 
cease to be regarded as a source of revenue, and that all the real wants of the Gov- 
ernment should be supplied exclusively from duties on imports, assessed so as to 
prevent frauds, and payable in cash. 

To understand this subject, as it was really understood by those friends with 
whom 1 acted in the passage of the compromise act, it is necessary to recur to some 
other proceedings contemporaneous with it. Mr. Clay's bill to distribute the proceeds 
of the sales of the public lands among the States, which passed both Houses of Con- 
gress about the same time with the compromise itself, was by us regarded as part and 
parcel of one great rtvemie and financial system, which we desired to establish for 
the benefit of the whole country. While temporarily surrendering the land fund to 
the States to which it rightfully belonged, in the judgment of the Congress of 1833, 
we provided, in the compromise act, that there should be a day fixed at which, in 
accordance with a suggestion previously made by General Jackson himself, the land 
fund should forever cease to be regarded as a source of revenue by the General 
Government. It is true, that we should have acted more wisely, as the event 
proved, by incorporating the provisions of a distribution bill in the compromise it- 
self. But who could have supposed at that day that President Jackson would have 
vetoed a bill which carried out his own suggestion 1 Nevertheless, he defeated that 
great and salutary measure of distribution by means which no end can ever justify. 
He refused to return the bill with his objections to the House in which it originated, 
unquestionably because he had reason to believe that, had he complied with this 
liis constitutional duty, each branch of Congress stood ready, by a vote of two- 
thirds, to make the bill a law in spite of his veto. 

1 have said that the tariffof 1842 is in my view a substantial contpliance, in most 
respects, with the principles of the compromise act, and the pledgeS given in that 
act on the subject of the regulation of duties from and after the 30ili of June, 1842. 
Eul it was not a compliance in all respects. In my humble judgment, had the 
tariff" of 1842 been passed strictly in the spirit of the compromise itself, it would 
have been a better tariff for protection than the law now in force. It would have 
better guarded the revenue against frauds in the foreign valuation ; and it would 
more effectually have checked excessive importation, which is one of the greatest 
curses of our country. The distribution of the land fund among the States, con- 
templated by the compromise, and temporarily provided for by the land bill, would 
have put an end to the agitation of the question of protection forever ; and the 
principle avowed and sustained by Mr. Clay, that, in laying duties for revenue, dis- 
crimination should always be made in favor of protection, as an incident to revenue, 
would have been the settled doctrine of the country. 

To show that this opinion is well founded, let us suppose that Congress, on the 
30th of June, 1842, had resolved to make a tariff strictly in pursuantie of the com- 
promise. The latter directed that, after that day, and not until after that day, du- 
ties should descend by a rapid reduction, not of 10 per cent., but of ^Ae last half of 



8 

the whole excess above 20 per cent, left after the 31st of December, 1839, and that 
reduction be to 20 per cent, on the home value of the imports, unless at that time 
the revenue from that rate of duty should be inadequate to support the administra- 
tion of the Government. Now, how stood the facts at that day 1 We had actually 
incurred a national debt of more than $20,000,000, at that very time, under the 
operation of a higher tariff than 20 per cent., and that, too, with the aid of all the 
land fund, and bank stocks and bank dividends besides. Our revenue had sunk so 
low, that the credit of the nation was, at that very moment, in the most deplorable 
condition. We had borrowed on that credit till foreigners would not lend us another 
dollar; and in our own market, the 6 per cent, certificates of the loan, redeemable 
in twenty years, could not be sold, to any considerable amount, for any thing like 
their par value. We had approached the very verge of national bankruptcy ; and 
but for the Whig revolution of 1840, which had elected a Wliig Congress to decide 
our fate, we should at that moment have been in imminent peril of national repudi- 
ation. The depressed state of public credit was one of tiie contingencies anticipated 
by the friends of Mr. Clay, at the passage of the compromise, and we now know we 
were right. We foresaw that the duties never could descend to 20 per cent., if 
that pledge to raise the duties to the standard of the wants of the Government, giv- 
en in the act, should be fulfilled ; and our hope, our belief was, that before they 
could descend, by the operation of the law, to 20 per cent., men of all parties, see- 
ing that the Government could not be supjiorted on that principle, would confess 
old errors, and join with us, under hap[)ier auspices, in so adjusting the tariff as 
that, while the wants of Government would be supplied from import duties, ample 
protection, as incident to the revenue, would be freely accorded to us without fur- 
ther strife. If, then, Congress had, at that time, raised the duties to the standard 
then fixed by the compromise, we should have had a tariff which would more effect- 
ually have protected home labor than the act of 1842, because, although the du- 
ties wo\dd have been for revenue, with only incidental protection, (the very prin- 
ciple of the act of 1842,) yet those duties, without the aid of other sources of reve- 
nue, would have been still higher than those 0/1842, and their collection far better 
guarded against frauds. 

But the compromise act caused a gradual reduction of duties until the 30th of 
June, 1842 ; and the question remains to be answered, " why did the friends of pro- 
tection to home labor consent to such a reduction, even for a limited period 1" 

The answer might be a very short one. Under the circumstances in which we 
were then placed, it was palpable to the minds of those who voted for the compro- 
mise, that, unless we accepted that, we should have to submit to the speedy de- 
struction of the whole manufacturing interest. But it is due to the subject, that, in 
the answer to ihis question, the circumstances to which I have alluded should be 
briefly explained. At the time of the passage of this law, the violent opposition of 
many of our fellow-citizens in the South, and of not a few elsewhere, to the whole 
protective policy, was unparalleled in the history of this country. Sou^th Carolina, 
by her ordinance of Nullification, had openly defied the General Government, and 
resolved that no duties should be collected within her limits. It is easy, at this 
dav, after the storm has passed over, to speak of her resistance as a thing which 
could have been easily crushed by the exhibition of a little firmness. 1 never 
doubted, nor do I believe that Mr. Clay or any of his friends ever doubted, that the 
power of this Government was amply sufficient to enforce for the time the collec- 
tion of the duties on imports, in despite of all the threatened hostility of South 
Carolina, and all other enemies of the protective policy. But it is due to truth to 
say, that at that time South Carolina had many sym[)athizers, and not a few adhe- 
rents, in other parts of the country. Wc were every day in danger of a collision, 
which might terminate in bloodshed ; and, in that event, any man tolerably acquaint- 
ed with the American character could anticipate, quite as well as I can now de- 
scribe, the imminent danger of a protracted and bloody contest, which, if it did not 
endanger the Union, as I firmly believe it would, must have rendered the protect- 



ive system hateful to our countrymen, as the exciting cause of a civil war, and inca- 
pable of beino maintained, except by the butchery of American citizens by Ameri- 
can hands, f never did, and do not now, believe that any such system can be long 
maintained in a Government like ours, if it cannot be upheld without a civil war. 
The friends of the compromise, in the firm belief that the protective policy was en- 
titled to the confidence and support of the American people, and would grow up 
and establish itself in their affections, if a violent civil strife could be avoided, de- 
sired, of all lhin<;s, time — time for reason to resume her empire — time for the vio- 
lent passions of men, then inflamed to the very verge of insanity, to subside; and 
they consented to a gradual reduction of duties for a limited period, with a view to 
theultimaie safety of the protective principle itself, as well as to avert the horrors 
of a civil conflict, and to save the excited and deluded men who were nisiiing into 
these extremities from tlie consequences of their own folly. In the midst of all 
these considerations, then pressing upon the attention of the friends of protection, 
there was another staring us in the face, which is too often forgotten or overlooked. 
At the very commencement of the session of that Congress which passed the act,^ 
President Jackson, in his annual message, threw off the cloak of a "judicious" tar- 
iff, and openly arrayed the whole power of the Executive against the protective 
system. Then, for the first lime, we heard from him the declaration, that " expe- 
rience, our best guide on this as on other subjects, made it doubtful whether the 
advantages of this system are not counterbalanced by many evils, and whether it did 
not tend to beget, in the minds of a large portion of our countrymen, a spirit of dis- 
content and je»\ousy dangerous to the stabiltty of the Union;'' "that a tariff 
designated for perpetual protection had entered into the minds of but few of our 
statesmen, and that the most they had anticipated was a temporary protection ;" 
and "that those who took an enlarged view ot^ the condition of our country must be 
satisfied that the policy of protection must be ultimately limited to those articles of 
domestic manufacture which are indispensable to our safety in time of war." 

These and many other declarations against the existing tarift' in the President's 
annual messace almost instantaneously arrayed the mass of his party against the 
protective policy throughout the whole country. It required no gifted seer to pre- 
dict its fate, if some conciliatory measure were not speedily adopted by its friends, 
to allay the existing excitement. The President's message against the tariff was 
communicated to Congress at that session on the 4th of December ; and with such 
expedition did his party in the House of Representatives act on that occasion, in 
pursuance of his suggestion, that, on the 28th of the same month, the Committee of 
Ways and Means reported a bill to repeal the existing tarUf, and in lieu thereof to 
collect a revenue of but $12,500,000 by all imposts on foreign merchandise, the 
average duty on which, as proposed in the bill, was aboui 16 per c(g)f., and that to 
be assessed on the foreign valuation. This bill, which has been sometimes called 
Mr. Verplanck's hill, but which was really a measure emanating from the Execu- 
tive, was actually hr advanced on its passage in the House at the time the compro- 
mise was under consideration in the Senate ; and its final passage in the House 
was no longer problematical. It was a measure which, if successful, could not fait 
to prove an immediate death blow to the whole protective policy. Its passage had 
been forced through the Committee of the Whole on the state of the Union after an 
inefiectual effort by the friends of American industry to impede its progress; when, 
on the 23d of February, 183o, the friends of protection in the Senate made the last 
efibrt in their power to arrest its downward tendency, and to stay for so long a time 
as possible tl;e hand which was extended for its destruction. At that critical mo- 
ment, the question for tin m to consider was, not merely how much protection was 
necessary for home labor, but hoto much of it could be saved. The bill in the 
House, backed as it was by the power of the Executive, and the public sentiment 
in its favor daily increasing, in consequence of the President's denunciations of the 
then existing tariff, might be temporarily arrested by the action of a few Senators; 
but those very Senators saw that, unless some compromise could be effected while 



la 

'vhey retained their slender and very precarious majority in the Senate, the ultimate 
triumph of the destructive system, and that, too, at no distant day, was inevitable. 

Time can never efface my vivid remembrance of the anxious responsibility felt 
by myself and those who acted with me at that moment. I did not rely upon my 
own judgment alone, nor upon that of my associates in the Senate, for the course I 
should adopt. I sought the advice of one who was a citizen of my own State, and 
who stood at the time at the head of the manufacturing interest of the country — a 
man whose extensive and minute acquaintance with the whole subject of the tariff 
was not exceeded by that of any other man in the nation — one who had embarked 
largely in manufactures himself, and who was deeply interested forotiier manufactures, 
and withal one whose exalted character as a man of pure, patriotic, and honest pur- 
pose, was unsurpassed. I refer to the late E. I. Du Pont, of the Brandywine. At 
my solicitation, he came to Washington to advise with me on the subject, and, after 
fully weighing all the circumstances which surrounded us, anxiously advised me to 
accept the compromise, and to exert myself to procure its passage. He expressed 
strong apprehensions that we could not carry the compromise in the face of the 
rival measure, which offered better terms to the enemies of protection in the House ; 
and when I represented to him that those who had been tlneatened with a rope by 
the President would prefer our bill to the bill in the House, on account of the pa- 
ternity of the hitter, the possibility that we might for a time arrest the passage of 
any bill in the Senate, and the deep solicitude felt by the Nullifiers to procure some 
measure of immediate relief, to save them from the consequences of their own folly, 
he expressed the highest gratification at the prospect of the passage of the compro- 
mise, as the only means left of preserving the principle to tlie maintenance of which 
he had devoted a great part of his own useful life. His judgment on the subject 
confirmed my own opinions ; and I owed him while he lived a debt of gratitude for 
his assistance on that occasion, which, although I never had it in my power to repay, 
3'et have I never failed, either before or since his lamented death, to acknowledge. 
Thus assured, my feeble aid was freely given to that great measure, which, while 
it saved the manufacturing interest from sudden and ulter destruction, soothed and 
conciliated the angry passions of men then ready to rush upon revolution and blood- 
shed, and gave am.ple time to tiie friends of the protective policy to rally in its sup- 
port before the dearest interests of the country could be fatally affected. Any at- 
tempt to withstand and repel the flood then rushing upon us would have been truit- 
less. It was clear that we should be swept away by the torrent. We preferred to 
divide, to divert, and to retard i;. And I then thought, and still think, that the mighty 
■effort of Mr. Clay on that occasion, to save his favorite policy from the danger 
which threatened it from every quarter, was the most triumphant act of his life. 

After a most exciting debate on the merits of the bill, a great part of which was 
never publishef, in consequence of the feeling into which our friends had been betray- 
ed, who had always before that acted together on this subject, the question was taken 
•on the engrossment of the bill on the night of Saturday, the 23d of February, 1833, 
and it was ordered to a third reading in the Senate by an overwhelming majority. 
At this stage, we arrested further proceedings injhe Senate, in consequence of the 
constitutional difficulty oU^nginating a revenue bill in that body. But we had se- 
cured our object by thus indicating to the House the measure to which we were 
disposed to accede. " On the Monday following, being the 25tli of February, a suc- 
cessful motion was made in the House to strike out the whole of Mr. \'erplanck's 
bill, and substitute the compromise in lieu of it. The bill thus amended was order- 
ed to be engrossed for a third reading on the same day, and shortly after became 
the law of the land. 

It is too late now, after the experience the nation has had of General Jackson's 
influence while President, to pretend that it was not in his power in 1833 to have 
crushed the protective policy. His party was in the zenith of its power. It had 
abandoned every principle formerly professed by it, to which he had become hos- 
tile. It had sacrificed every institution and every measure which it had formerly 



11 

advocated, as soon as he declared war against it. It is too I:ite to say that he had 
some friends among the taiifl' men, who could have influenced his own course. He 
had friends among the bank men ; lie had friends among tlie internal improvement 
men; and it was mainly by their aid that he was made a prominent candidate in 
1824, and actually elected in 1828. Had the friends of the bank, the internal im- 
provement system, and the tariff, foreseen his policy in 1824, he could not possibly 
have obtained votes enough in the United States to have carried him into the House 
of Representatives as a candidate for election. His intentions on all these subjects 
were studiously concealed, pending his election; and when they were finally dis- 
closed, they exhibited that generalship in politics for which he was deservedly dis- 
tinguished. He killed off the institutions of the country in detail, always selecting 
the weakest first, destroying that with the aid of t!ie friends of tlie others, before he 
ventured to announce any hostility to the latter ; and never attacking the strongest 
until the friends of weaker measures, which had been victimized, became powerless. 
His first attack was on the internal improvement system ; and although it was quite 
a favorite with most of his Western and Northern supporters, on the day his veto on 
the Maysville road bill was sent to Congress, yet three weeks afterwards it had 
scarcely a friend in his party. The little remnant who dared to remonstrate against 
the veto were immediately proscribed, and turned out of his political church. 
'■^ Ucalcgon proximiis ardet.'''' The bank's turn came next. His determined hos- 
tility to that was disclosed immediately after he found himself successful in the 
destruction of the improvement system, and not before. " The General," said his 
friend, Felix Grundy, one day, to me, ** is a sporlsnian who must always have a cock 
in the pit." He had tried his apprentice hand on the internal improvements; and 
although while he was a member of the Senate of the United Slates he had, by all 
his voles, carried that system to the most extravagant extent, and won golden opin- 
ions by the latitude of his constitutional construction among his dupes in the West, 
yet he crushed the whole of it so effectually at a single blow, after he became Pres- 
ident, that its friends lost all influence with his gigantic party. Emboldened by this 
success, by tlie eclat which the enemies of internal improvements bestowed upon 
him from all quarters, he sought new laurels of the same kind in a new field ; and 
although at no period before his election had he even ventured to whisper his hos- 
tility to the bank, although during the whole period of his service in the Senate of the 
United States, when, if he had harbored any hostility to the bank on the ground of 
its unconstitutionality or dangerous tendency to our liberties, his oath of fidelity as 
a Senator ought to have compelled him to disclose it, he never breathed a word 
against it, yet, as soon as he had got rid of the internal improvements, he declared 
war against the bank, and effectually crushed that loo. 

True it is that the Pennsylvania Legislature, by a unanimous vote, had shortly 
before declared for the bank. Did not his party friends in that body, immediately 
after hearing the news of the veto, wheel into the party line, and unite in all his 
denunciations of that institution? True it is that George M. Dallas, the present 
Democratic candidate for the Vice Presidency, was the father oi- the bank i?ill, 
was the man intrusted with the memorial of the bank itself, was the chairman of 
the committee to which that memorial was referred, was the very man who reported 
the bill, voted for it, and spoke for it, through all its stages. Did he not, with his 
brother Senator from Pennsylvania, who voted in the same way, turn about within 
a {e\v days after the veto, and denounce the bank ? W^ho does not remember the 
predictions at the time of that veto that there would be a great desertion from the 
President's party, in consequence of that act ; and who has forgotten that nearly 
all of those who talked loudest in his party in favor of the bank were whipped in 
and became clamorous against it as soon as his veto appeared ? He vetoed the 
bank bill in July, 1832, and, as we have already seen, within six months after that 
lie made war on the tariff. Can any reasonable man doubt what would have been 
its fate if Henry Clay, with all the aflection of a parent for the protective policy, 
had not rescued it from destruction by the compromise act of the 2d of March, 



12 

1833 ? But for the Interposition of Mr. Clay, the passage of the bill reported by 
the Committee of Ways and Means in the House would, at no very distant day, 
have been inevitable. Wiiat miglu have been the fate of the Union, I leave others 
to conjecture. My business is now with tlie tariff' alone ; and I confine myself to that. 

Henry Clay was at tlie head of the committee which reported the compiomise 
act. James K. Polk, of Tennessee, his present rival for the Presidency, was at 
ihe tail of the Committee of Ways and Means in the House, which reported the bill 
to which I have referred. To understand Mr. Polk, it is now necessary to under- 
stand that bill. Althoui^h he was tiie last-named member on that committee, and 
in the rear of the column which attacked the tariff, there was no more thorough- 
going, no more denunciatory enemy of the protective policy than James K. Polk, 
But let us try hiin by the bill which he and his colleagues on that committee re- 
ported, and by his votes, as they stand recorded on the journals of Congress, against 
the protective policy. This bill, which will be found to be the 14ih document iri 
the volume of Reports of Committees at the 2d session of the 22d Congress, reduces 
the duties on t!io 2d March, 1835, as follows — all assessable, be it remembered, on 
the foreign rmluatiini : On woollens, to 15 per cent. ; on all not exceeding 35 cents 
the square yard, 5 per cent. ; on worsted stuff goods of all kinds, 10 per cent. ; on 
worsted and woollen hosiery, gloves, mitts, bindings, and stockinets, 10 per cent.; 
on all other cloths, merino shawls, fl mnels, baizes and cassimeres, carpetings and 
rugs of all kinds, 20 per cent.; on clotliing, ready made, of all descriptions, 20 per 
cent. ; on ail cotton goods, 20 per cent., except nankins from India, on which Mr. 
Polk's duty was 15 per cent., and cotton hosiery, gloves, mitts, and stockinets, on 
which his duty was 10 per cent., as well as upon cotton twist, yarn, and thread ; on 
all manufactures of flax and hemp, on sail duck and cotton bagging, 15 per cent. ; 
on all manufactures of tin, japanning, gilt, plated, brass, copper, and pewter, and on 
saddlery, plated, brass, and polished steel, 20 per cent. ; on common saddlery, 10 
per cent.; on earthen and stone ware, 20 percent. ; on all side and firearms, rilles, 
and muskets, 20 per cent. ; on bridle bits and glass ware, 20 per cent. ; on manu- 
factures of iron and steel generally, a duty of 20 per cent. ; on salt and coal, 5 per 
cent. On every thing produced by the farmer in the Middle and Northern States, 
Mr. Polk, who is a cotton grower, recommended in this bill one unvarying stand- 
ard of only 15 per cent. — 15 per cent, on potatoes, 15 per cent, on oats, 15 per 
cent, on wheat and wheat (lour, butter, bacon, beef, and pork. 

Such was the character of that bill, from the passage of which Henry Clay saved 
the country by the adoption of the compromise. Had a tornado passed over all the 
manufacturing establishments of the country at that time, it would scarcely have 
proved a greater curse than that measure, which had the earnest support of Mr. 
James K. Polk, of Tennessre. By reducing the duty on wool to 15 per cent., it 
put a knife to the throat of every sheep in the country. By a duty of 20 per cent, 
on ready-made clothing of all descriptions, it struck down a whole class of the most 
industrious and useful mechanics of the nation. If it had been a bill purposely de- 
signed to set fire to the most of the mechanic shops in the country, it would hardly 
have had a worse effect upon the laboring classes. It would have fed us on pota- 
toes from Ireland ; and at those periods when the farmers of the Middle and North- 
ern States were suffering most from the pressure of the times, our bread stuffs would 
have been grown on the borders of the Baltic and the Black sea, instead of on our 
own soil. Let the farmers, mechanics, and manufacturers of the country now an- 
swer what they think of the new candidate for the Presidency, James K. Polk, of 
Tennessee ? 

But I have not yet done with Mr. James K. Polk, of Tennessee, and his bitter 
hostility to the protective policy. Search the records of Congress, and you will 
find, that in every instance where the American system was attacked, while he was 
in Congress, he was its assailant, its constant and uncompromising foe. On the 
23d of June, 1832, he voted for the motion of Mr. McDulne, of South Carolina, to 
reduce the duty on cotton goods, costing not exceeding 15 cents the square yard, to 



12i per cent, ad valorem. On the same day he voted for Mr. McDuffie's niotioa 
to abolish the duty of §30 per ton on rolled iron. On the previous d;iy he voted to 
reduce the duly on salt to 5 cents per 56 lbs., and voted against the duties on boots 
and bootees, on cabinet wares, hats and caps, whips, bridles, saddles, carriages and 
parts of carriages, blank books, earthen and stone wares, and manufactures of mar- 
ble, and also against the duly on wool. With tiiis exhibition ol the friendship of 
James K. Polk for the laboring freemen of all classes in this country, I might leave 
him in their hands. 1 have not referred to his published speeches on the tariff, 
which always breathed the most settled hostility to the whole policy. Politicians 
sometimes speak one way, and vote another. Mr. \ an Buren always spoke against 
the tariff, but generally voted for it. There were several poliiicians of this school 
in Congress at the passage of tlie last tariff. But James K. Polk was never of that 
school. He was, in deed as well as in word, on all occasions, an enemy to protec- 
tion for the laborer. I mean to try him by his acts and his votes ; and, without 
going further, I might leave those acts and votes, which 1 have thus exposed, to the 
indignant commentaries of the laboring men of all classes, with their friends and 
employers. 

But I propose to do full justice to Mr. Polk on this subject. The people shall 
not misunderstand the extent of his hostility to the domestic industry of his country. 
On the 28th day of February, 1834, within oiie year after the passage of the com- 
promise, Mr. Hall, of North Carolina, in the House of Representatives of the Unit- 
ed States, introduced a resolution, the object of which was to procure from the 
Committee of Ways and Means a report of a plan, accompanied by a bill, to repeal 
the protection guarantied by the compromise, under the pretext of immediately re- 
ducing the revenue to the necessary expenses of the Government; and James K. 
Polk, of Tennessee, who was at that time the chairman of that very Committee of 
Ways and Means, voted for that resolution. There were 69 yeas in favor of that 
resolution, and 115 nai/s against it. In voting for this resolution, tlie deliberate de- 
sign of which was to violate all the pledges given in the compromise, Mr. Polk was 
backed by the votes of six of the nine members of that same committee, and by all 
the NuUifiers and ultra anti-tarilT men in the House. Tiiis movement shows the 
dissatisfaction with the compromise cherished at an early period by the enemies qf 
protection. They were sensible that Mr. Clay had triumphed by the salvation of 
his favorite policy ; and the strength of the vote against the resolution shows how 
great that triumph was. But oii^ year previous to the introduction of Mr. Hall's 
resolution, it would have passed the House by an overwhelming majority. The 
votes on Mr. A'erplanck's bill, at that time, proved that conclusively. But the fact 
is, that the evil spirit of the storm — the spirit of disunion — which had been raised 
by Nullification, had been subdued by that master spirit which, for thirty years, bad 
exercised so great an inlluence in our public councils. That same master spirit 
had quelled the same demon at the great crisis of the Missouri compromise. On 
both occasions, Henry Clay saved the Union ; and, in the judgment of many, on 
each of them he saved the Union at its last gasp. 

But the vote of James K. Polk and his allies, in the war on domestic industry 
was not the first exhibition of their spleen and hostility to the compromise. Within, 
six weeks after the passage of the act, the Executive of the United States began to 
violate its true spirit and its legitimate construction, for the purpose of breaking 
down our American policy. On the 20th of April, 1833, the Secretary of the 
Treasury under President Jackson issued his famous Treasury circular to all the 
officers of the customs in the United States. That circular contained an Execu- 
tive decree abrogating all the specific duties and the whole system (S mbihnums in the 
existing tariff laws. Under a pretext as foreign from the views of all the men with 
whom I acted in the passage of that law as any thing the most remote, this arbitra- 
ry edict declared, without one syllable in the act to support it, that it was our in- 
tention, in passing it, to repeal these specific duties and minimums. It is scarcely 
possible that any human being could have been so ignorant as not to know that a 



14 

specific duty couid, at any time, be as well ascertained as an ad valorem duty, and 
that these duties were convertible. By the compromise we simply provided that 
all existing duties, whether specific or ad valorem, should be reduced according to 
a fixed ratio. This outrage on :he law, which, because the Executive, whose prov- 
ince it was to collect the duties, had perpetrated it, was utterly without remedy, 
proved of great injury to all those manufactures which depended for protection upon 
the minimums and specific duties. The injury inflicted on the manufacturing 
interest did not admit of legal redress; for the friends of protection could not by 
any possibility bring the question before any judicial tribunal, while the Executive 
officers refused to sue for or collect the duties in pursuance of their instructions. 
Nothing remained for us to do but to submit in silence, until the returning sense of 
justice of the country should induce the people to drive the enemies of domestic in- 
dustry from the high places of the Republic. 

And here let me pause for tlie purpose of entreating every friend of home laborJ 
who has ever thought of voting for James K. Polk as President of the United' 
States, to take warning by the example which I have now set before him. If there 
be such a man, let him not lay the flattering unction to his soul that he can save 
his favorite policy, while the Executive of the United States, with the officers of 
the customs appointed by him, is hostile to that policy. They have the collection 
of the duties for |)rotection ; and he Vi'ho would commit the lamb to the custody ot 
the wolf, will jusily sulTer for his own folly. 

Before I have done with this subject, I ought to mention, in tiiis connexion, what 
I think is another strong evidence of the hostility of Jaines K. Polk and his politi- 
cal associates to the protective principles of the compromise act. Although the) 
continued in power from the passage of that law until the year 1841, they nevei 
attempted, in a sinj;le instance, ^o provide, either by prospective legislation or bj 
any Executive re2;'ilation,/wr any mode of assessing duties on the home valuation_ 
nor did they attempt to pass a law raisin? the duties, prospectively, after the 30ll 
of June, 1842, to the real wants of the Government, although they knew, as wel 
through the whole session of Congress of 1S40-'41 as we now know, that one o_ 
both of these measures ought to be prospectively adopted, to save the Governmer.l| 
from the danger of bankruptcy. The principle of the home valuation was a sirit. 
qua non, at the time of the [)assage of the act, with many of those who, like my- 
self, voted for it for the purpose, avowed by me at the time, of saving the protective 
policy. We considered that a vote for the duties fixed by the act, to be assessed 
on this princi|)le, was, essentially, to all intents and purposes, a vote for protection; 
and we determined, therefore, to compel 31r. Calhoun and his peculiar friends in 
the Senate to record their votes, in the most unequivocal form, on the journal, 
in favor of that princi|)le. And here I cannot help complaining of the conduct of 
Mr. Calhcun, after the passage of this law, and especially after the period when 
most of us, friendly to the protective policy, who had voted with him for its passage, 
had left the Senate of the United States. How well his conduct comported with 
that feelin" which became a man who had received at our hands a shelter from the 
storm which threatened to annihilate him, I leave for him and others who are in 
the same category to determine. To explain his conduct, I must refer to a few 
facts. 

While the motion was pending to amend the bill, by directing the assessment of 
the duties on tlie home value, a debate spnmg up, in tiie course of which Mr. Cal- 
houn repeatedly argued that the amendment was unconstitutional, and declared that 
it was impossible for him to vote for it. A number of tariff" Senators, friendly to 
the compromise act, with wh(mi I was acting in concert, including, among others, 
Samuel Bell, of New Hampshire, A. Naudain, of Delaware, Sanmel A. Foot, of Con- 
necticut, and John Holmes, of Maine, had resolved to compel all the anti-protec- 
tionists in the Senate to vote for that amendment, in every stage of its passage, or 
to defeat the bill by laying it on the table. We foresaw all the objections which 
have been since made to the adoption of that mode of preventing evasions of the 



sw and frauds on the revenue, and we knew that tlie amendment necessarily car- 
■■ied with it protection to American industry. It was an unpleasant prescription for 
Mr. Calhoun, but it was not ili adapted to the peculiar disease under which he 
labored. After he had frequently announced his unalterable determination to vote 
against the amendment, which he as often said it would be a violation of the Con- 
stitution, and against his conscience, to support, a motion was made, and by myself, 
to lay the whole bill on the table ; and, on the part of my friends, 1 avowed our de- 
termination not to suffer it to be called up again during the session. At the request 
of a nullifying Senator, I withdrew that motion, to give himself and his friends time 
to reflect further ; but, ai the same time, they wore distinctly given to understand 
that, unless they agreed to vote for the amendment, at every stage of its passage, 
the motion should be renewed, and the bill nailed to the table, in which event they 
must fight it out with the General Government. Those who are curious to consult 
the debates in Congress at that day will see, by recurring to them, that, on the 
next day, when the bill was taken up again, every man among ihem, every enemy 
of the tariff in the Senate, including the Hon. Jolm C. Calhoun, of South Carolina, 
voted for the avicndment. His vote for the home valuation stands recorded on the 
journals of tht- Senate, at every stage of the passage of the bill ; and he contented 
himself at the time, as l|e declared, during the passage of the tariff of 1842, (when 
this vote was invoked in judgment against him by a tariff Senator,) by saying that 
he voted for it under an oral protest. It is true that promises made under the fear 
of death are not binding in law ; but it would be utterly inadmissible to suppose that 
Mr. Calhoun acted under duresse, and it would be equally inadmissible to suppose 
that his vote was given with a view to procure the votes of others, then necessary 
for his own safety, because such a vote would have been a palpable fraud upon 
them, if, at the lime, he meditated an evasion of the pledge given in the amendment. 

Two days after the approval of this bill Congress adjourned ; and in less than 
hree months we learned, to our perfect astonishment, from the public prints, that 
VIr. Calhoun was, in South Carolina, exulting an)ong his followers on account of 
vhat he called his triumph over Henry Clay ! In the session of 1839 he even 
went so far as to tell Mr. Clay, on the tioor of the Senate, that at the passage of 
he compromise, he was his master I It is true that Mr. Clay reproved the folly 
of this arrogance, and even told him " that he would not own him for a slave." 
But those who forced him into the position t have described had then left the Sen- 
ate, and the swaggering of Mr. Calhoun was not rebuked by them. I finish this 
sketch by simply stating the fact that Mr. Calhoun is now understood to be a friend 
to the election of James K. Polk, the peculiar friend of General Jackson, who, in 
1833, threatened to hang him as high as Ilaman, and that Mr. C. is also the uncom- 
promising enemy of Henry Clay. 

It may be thought due to the occasion, that, as I have touched upon the princi- 
ples of all the other candidates, I should devote a few moments to the consideration 
of the principles of Mr. Dallas. If the modern Democrats are satisfied with his 
votes in the Senate, I do not see why wc should complain of them. He was the 
father of the bill to recharter the Bank of the United States, which fell by Presi- 
dent Jackson's veto. He voted for the bill to distribute the proceeds of the sales 
of the public lands among the States on all occasions within my knowledge. And 
he professed to be so strong a fiiend to protection and the tariff policy, that he made 
a speech against the compromise, because it reduced duties, and voted against it, on 
its passage, for the avowed reason that there was not enough protection in it for 
him. He stood alone by the side of a distineuislicd tariff Senator in the debate 
against the compromise, thus appearing not willing to vield any thing to save the 
peace of the country. One Southern Democratic Senator spoke against the bill, 
and was burnt in effiay by some of his constituents for so doing, allliough he actu- 
ally voted for it. I iiope Mr. Dallas may now share a better fate among his Demo- 
cratic constituents in the same region. It is due to him to say, thai we now imder- 
stand that he has changed his principles on all these great measures, and that some 



of Ills friends insist that he is as hostile to protection in every shape as James K. 
Polk himself. 

But Henry Clay has never changed ; and his exertions in the public councils, 
aided by his instructive eloquence, have done more for the cause of the laboring 
classes in this nation, and have made more proselytes to the doctrines of the protect- 
ive policy, than all the efforts of any other man in the country. At the time he com- 
menced his labors in Congress to build up the American system, most of the young 
men of the nation were educated in the free-trade doctrines of Adam Smith, and 
the visionary theories of others like him, whose knowledge of [)olitical economy 
was obtained in the closet instead of the council chamber. 1 was one of those who 
had imbibed these opinions ; and if, for the last twenty years, I have been the 
steady friend of protecting American interests against foreign competition,.^!! has , 
been inainlv owing to the conviction produced on my mind by the perusal of those 
masterly specimens of argument and elbquence with which he sustained his favorite 
policy in the halls of the Capitol of our country. 

I have tresjydssed too long, fellow-citizens, upon your patience; but allow me, in 
conclusion, by every consideration of what is due to the honor and interest of your 
country, by every feeling which ought to warm and animate your hearts as American 
citizens, anxious for the protection of your own industry and the welfaieof all the 
laboring classes among us, to entreat you not to overlook the true issue, to be de- 
cided in November next, between Henry Clay, of Kentucky, and James K. Polk, 
of Tennessee. It is not a question between men merely ; it is not a question about 
honors and offices, and the rewards of partisan service; it is not a question about 
the payment of the State debts, or tlie acquisition of foreign territory ; it is, as I 
have said already, emphatically a question of BREAD — a question whether we shall 
sink the mass of the laboring freemen of this country, who now gain their bread by 
the sweat of their brows, to tlie level of the European paupers, who labor for six 
pence a dav, and find themselves. It is an axiom of eternal truth in politics, that a 
nation completely impoverished will soon be a nation completely enslaved. If, by 
the abandonment of protection to home labor, we reduce half a million of voters 
at our elections to a condition of as servile d(q)endence and as abject poverty as our 
Southern slaves, how long can we rationally expect to remain a nation of freemen? 
More than a hundred ;uid forty years ago the treaty of Methuen, which was one of 
the principal causes of the beggary and want of Portugal, reduced her to the condi- 
tion of a dependency of England, struck down her national spirit, and enslaved iier 
people. By that treaty s!ie abandoned all right to protect her own industry, and 
agreed to admit British woollen goods of all kinds without duly or restriction. 
Nineteen hundred years ago, when Rome had conquered the principal part of the 
world, and freely admitted supplies from Lybia and Egypt into Italy, the in- 
dustry of her own citizens was paralyzed by the withdrawal of that protection to 
which it was fairly entitled, poverty and want reigned where plenty had prevailed, 
and a race of meii, the bravest and the fieest that cvef lived, were speedily coti- 
verled into the subjects of a despot. And so keenly did Tacitus, one of the grayest 
and most philosophical of her historians, feel the degradation of supplying her legions 
from the industry of foreign countries, that he has announced witti an oath of vexa- 
tion and disgust that deplorable change in her condition.* Let us take warni. ^ 
from the examples of other nations. Let us guard and protect the real, not merely 
the nomir.al ind 'pendence of our country. The ever fervent aspirations from eve-" 
true \merican heart will be, for the preservation of that independence, " Esto 
perpetua''—'' MAY IT BE EVERLASTING !" 



• The following is the pa^^sagc referred to : 

" AtHERCULE olim ex Italia lesjionibus longinquns in provmcias commeatus portabantur nee 
nunc infccunditate labwaiur ,- seJ Mnciim pot ius et Egyptum exercenms, navibusque et casibus 
Vi\.& popuU Roaiani pcrmissa est !— Tacitvs, Annal xii, 43. 



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